Antonio Conte has aimed a thinly-veiled dig at Jose Mourinho over Tottenham ’s decline in the wake of his side’s defeat to Chelsea in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final.
Spurs suffered a serious blow to their hopes of reaching a second successive Carabao Cup final with a 2-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday, with the Blues dominant for long spells.
Performances and results have improved markedly since Conte replaced Nuno Espirito Santo, but the London club remains some distance behind the Premier League ’s leading clubs.
More evidence of that fact was provided at Chelsea, with Thomas Tuchel’s men putting one foot into the final with what was a much more comfortable win than the scoreline might suggest.
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But both goals were a mess all of Tottenham’s own making, with two key defensive errors costing them.
First, Emerson Royal gave the ball away to Marcos Alonso, who sent Kai Havertz racing away to fire the Blues in front, despite Davison Sanchez’s attempts to keep it out on the line.
Then, the visitors conspired to score a rather comedic own-goal when Hakim Ziyech sent in a free-kick 11 minutes before the break.
Japhet Tanganga attempted to head Ziyech’s cross out of the box but instead sent the ball crashing off his team-mate Ben Davies and into the net.
Chelsea had several chances to improve their lead, with Hugo Lloris called into action by Ziyech, Timo Werner and Romelu Lukaku.
And with Spurs being forced to wait until five minutes into the second-half to have their first shot, the gap between the teams was evident.
While Conte is still relatively new to his post, it appears that the Italian is already of the opinion that the downturn began under Mourinho.
The Portuguese boss endured a torrid 18-month spell at Spurs after replacing Mauricio Pochettino, though did lead them to last year’s Carabao Cup final before being sacked.
But Conte has now taken the opportunity to aim a thinly-veiled dig at his long-time nemesis as he highlighted how the decline at Tottenham set in long ago.
“After this game and this game confirmed what I thought about the difference between the teams,” he said.
“But we need to have patience. We need to have patience because there is a lot, a lot of job to do in many aspects.
“I think honestly that in this moment and the last years the level of Tottenham has dropped, it has dropped a lot.
“Now you have to rebuild. To rebuild you need to have patience and to have patience you need to have time. We have to know the situation.
“We’re working a lot to try to fight also in the league and stay [up there], but at the moment we’re in the middle. Our situation is this. We’re in the middle, not up and not down, we're in the middle.”
The Spurs boss also insisted that it will take time for him to restore the club back to their previous standing.
“I think this is enough to understand the difference at this moment between us and them, but I repeat, we need so much time,” he added.
“But I think I have a bit of experience to tell you and also to speak. We need to stay united and try to rebuild an important situation for Tottenham. Now we’re in the middle. This is the truth.”
